Howto: Sucking Eggs

For those special occasions when I fear that I have offered inexcusably condescending advice, and may indeed have just told someone how to do something which they can already do in their sleep, here's what I know about sucking eggs, for grandmothers of all ages and genders.

First of all, why would you suck eggs? Well, the chief reason I know of is so that you can paint or decorate the shells. There are a lot of traditions which involve painting egg-shells, including the original interpretation of the whole 'easter-egg' thing. The chocolate, I have been led to believe, is a fairly recent update.

Secondly, you will need a pin, preferably a nice small sharp one. This is to poke the smallest, neatest possible hole in each end of the egg-shell. I have had mixed success with different approaches, varying with the type of eggs (free-range vs battery, etc) whether it is better to stab quickly and decisively, or to push slowly and insistently, or even to kind-of drill the needle into the end of the egg. See what works for you. Any given carton of eggs should all succumb to the same tactic.

Thirdly, you actually blow, rather than sucking. This assumes that you're not into eating raw egg, which may be an ignorant and barbaric presumption on my part. I have not noticed any particular advantage to blowing in one end or the other, you just hold the egg over a bowl and blow into the top of the egg. So long as the bottom hole is actually at the bottom of the egg while you blow, everything substantial should eventually get blown out.

Of course, you may already know this.